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MetaSocial crawler

facebookexternalhit

facebookexternalhit is a Meta link preview crawler used when content is shared on Meta family apps.

Not tied to answers in an AI assistant.

Get the robots.txt ruleMeta documentation
Is facebookexternalhit allowed on your site?4 Meta bots

Reads your live robots.txt and applies the same rules these crawlers use. Nothing is stored.

robots.txt token
facebookexternalhit
Follows robots.txt
Not always
How to verify it
Not published
Seen on
Not measured
Last checked
11 June 2026

Should you block facebookexternalhit?

Blocking it can break rich link previews and Open Graph extraction in Meta surfaces.

What blocking each Meta bot does
Meta botJobIf you block it
Meta-ExternalAgentTrainingBlocking it opts your site out of this direct Meta AI crawling path, but does not cover every Meta user-triggered fetcher.
Meta-WebIndexerSearchAllowing it can help Meta AI cite and link to your content; blocking it can reduce Meta AI search visibility.
Meta-ExternalFetcherUser fetchA hit usually represents an on-demand fetch for a specific URL rather than broad crawling.
facebookexternalhitThis pageOtherBlocking it can break rich link previews and Open Graph extraction in Meta surfaces.
meta-externaladsOtherBlocking it limits Meta’s crawling for those advertising and business uses. Meta documents separate crawlers for link previews, AI, and user-requested fetches.

About robots.txtfacebookexternalhit may not follow every robots.txt rule, because a person starts each request.

robots.txt
User-agent: facebookexternalhit
Disallow: /

Asks facebookexternalhit not to crawl any page. Other Meta bots are unaffected. Add it to the robots.txt file at the root of your site, above any wider rules.

Ignored robots.txt?

Allowing facebookexternalhit creates the possibility of retrieval. To find out whether Meta AI actually cites or recommends you, track your Meta AI mentions over time.

Also seen under Meta’s name, but not in its current documentation: FacebookBot. Rules naming them control no documented Meta crawler.

Spot it in your logs.

Match the name, then check where the request came from. Anyone can copy a user-agent.

User-agentsource
facebookexternalhit

Version numbers change. Match the highlighted name, not the whole string.

  1. 1

    Match the name

    Search your server or CDN log for facebookexternalhit, case-insensitive. A match is a clue, not proof.

  2. 2

    Check the source

    Meta publishes no IP ranges, reverse DNS or signatures for facebookexternalhit in the sources here, so it cannot be verified. Treat matches as unconfirmed.

Serve the content in HTML

The cited operator material does not verify JavaScript rendering. Serve useful HTML before client-side JavaScript where possible.

Questions, answered.

facebookexternalhit is a Meta link preview crawler used when content is shared on Meta family apps.

Sources.

Officially documented. Operator facts and Trakkr’s measurements keep separate dates.

  1. [1]
    Meta crawler documentation

    Officially documented · checked 11 June 2026

    developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/web-crawlers/

First verified 11 June 2026. Last source check 11 June 2026.

All AI crawlers

See which AI crawlers read your site.

Trakkr shows which bots, facebookexternalhit included, visit which pages each day, and whether the answers they feed mention you.

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